Essay by Eric Worrall
Aussie Energy & Climate Minister: “I don’t see we can put all the pressure on Renewables for Stability and Reliability”, blames Climate Change for Hot Summers.
Chris Bowen on renewables providing reliable energy:
…
CHRIS BOWEN: One of the biggest challenges to stability is frankly coal-fired power station outages that were unexpected. I mean we saw a big impact when the Callide Power Station in Queensland went offline a few years ago and is still not yet back online.
I don’t think we can just put all the pressure on renewables for stability and reliability. We have 3.4 gigawatts more going into this summer than we had last summer of generation, that’s a good thing. Yes, we need more storage. We have policies in place to get that through our Capacity Investment Scheme, which we’ve already begun rolling out. This is an ongoing task for governments and will continue to be.
…
Full transcript: https://minister.dcceew.gov.au/bowen/transcripts/interview-sabra-lane-abc-am-3
Bowen is the minister who in February this year vehemently rejected suggestions his renewable heavy policies might lead to blackouts.
What a shame Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen is so anti-nuclear. In June last year Bowen explained people who think nuclear is better than renewable are “dangerously ignorant”.
Modern zero carbon nuclear plants generally run like clockwork, delivering predictable, dispatchable electricity 24×7, 365 days per year.
3.4GW of reliable nuclear capacity would have contributed significantly to Australia’s grid stability this summer, and barring a transmission line failure, would likely have all but eliminated the risk of a summer blackout. Instead we have 3.4GW of additional useless renewables, which even the minister responsible admits can’t be relied upon to improve grid stability.
The following is Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen in 2022, explaining to the audience that we don’t have to worry about renewable intermittency, because we can store electricity like water.
Chris Bowen is sounding a lot less confident now he’s had his nose rubbed in a few energy market realities, but he still hasn’t got the balls to publicly admit he has taken Australian energy policy in the wrong direction.
When the proverbial hits the fan, Bowen will not be able to claim he wasn’t warned. Australia’s official energy grid body has been sounding the alarm for years on Australia’s increasingly precarious energy grid, and the risks posed by a lack of dispatchable capacity, since well before Bowen took office.
I accept Bowen inherited a mess from the previous net zero infatuated faux conservative administration, but Bowen’s ignorant and reckless energy policies have made the mess a whole lot worse.
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Chris Kenny’s commentary hits the nail on the head 👍 .
So … is he saying our imagined green reality didn’t become reality because all we imaged didn’t become reality … yet?
Utility scale electric storage is precisely the same as unicorn farts, something named and defined, but nonexistent in practice.
What has happened to accountability? How many disasters should someone be allowed before they are removed? I think the limit in my business is twice.
In my former businesses, it was exactly one. Of course, I was the boss.
The difficulty was, was the person truly sole responsible? Because the boss also put them and their subordinates into the position where they failed up.
Senior management ‘fun’—NOT.
Accountability has been systematically removed by those who are threatened by it.
I go along with Rud. One mistake can be a learning opportunity. Doing the same thing again is bye bye.
“…coal-fired power station outages that were unexpected.”
The ‘tell’ here, although Bowen may not recognize his Freudian slip, is you need fossil fuel or nuclear if you ‘expect’ grid reliability. Honourable Mr. Bowen, what exactly would you have done if you had ‘expected’ the coalfired outrage, huh?
Pounding the table while he utters this nonsense is also a lawyer’s ‘tell’ when the facts don’t support his case.
Old trial lawyer joke:
Gary,
owning a coal power station and government policy is support for renewables only and that elimination of fossil fuelled generation is the aim, would you invest money necessary to ensure reliable operation for years to come?
The answer must be that a minimum of money is spent in running the station and that poor maintenance is a sure fire way for breakdowns. Yet the politicians blame the fossil fuel generators for their short sighted policy?
If Canada is ‘the richest country on Earth run by idiots’ (Kevin O’Leary) Australia must come a close second.
How can the wonderful Australians have elected such an idiot?
They made deals to get the majority of seats but did not get the majority of votes.
I feel embarrassed every time I hear this bloke speak. He is utterly clueless.
deals ?. The Greens preferences are naturally going to flow to Labour. But they actually worked the other way in a few places, the Liberals preferences made Labour lose and Greens win some inner city seats.
We didnt, 67% of the population didnt vote for the Goverment. But our utterly corrupt preferential voting system ensures the clowns are running the circus. Bowen performance as climate change minister is only exceeded by his disaster as immigration minister last time they were in government
Its a preferential system , so each and every MP needs 50% +1 to be elected. Surely you know how it works, as its been forever thus.
Famously the Conservative PM Menzies in the early 60s won the election when a communist candidates preferences put one of his Mps over the 50% and kept Menzies in power. Was that corrupt ?
A proportional system would give even more power to the Greens and reduce that of the 3% minority vote Nationals
And yes the 2 party preferred vote was 52% labour and 48% Coalition. I bet you dont complain when the same voting and numbers favours the coalition with a small edge
I know how the system works and its why we end up with a Govt with 33% of the vote. A better system is first past the post with 50%. If nobody gets 50% first off, then the top 2 have a decider. That would wipe out the minor parties especialy in the Senate where the quota system allows nutters to get elected on a less than a hundred below the line votes.
Fundamental mistake there
First past the post isnt about 50% of the votes at all, just more then the next lowest candidate. It could be 38%
UK uses first past the post and hasnt had the governing party with 50% of the vote for 60 years , mostly because small parties and independents
2019 election Conservative 43.6% of votes but 56% of MPs
Blaming renewable induced outages on old coal unreliability is beyond ironic. Old coal cannot save intermittent renewables because it is OLD.
No one will invest in new coal given Australia’s daft energy policies. And old coal gets increasingly unreliable before being economically retired. In the US, the average unreliable old coal retirement age is 42 years.
This guy is as clueless as his counterpart Grenholm in the US.
Cut the amount of income a coal plant can earn and expect maintenance not to be cut back? How dumb can you be?
Yep, since the carbon tax was applied the only sane economic response for energy companies is to run the coal plants into the ground and head for the exit door as soon as possible.
after the frauds committed by the UN IPCC in doctoring their science. We should be rethinking our whole approach to climate and energy matters to rectify the mess we have made in recent decades.
The lefty smugs are worming their way in everywhere and thumbing their noses at the silent majority with their dribble-
Sharri Markson calls out Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore (msn.com)
FWIW
““Hillbilly Whisperer” ”
https://twitter.com/katewerk/status/1716824124566413345
Via
“The
Urban Bigot”
https://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2023/10/24/the-urban-bigot-2/
With lots of comments
In comments there –
“Something I read once…
……..
I ONCE WAS A NORMAL PERSON:
I used to think I was pretty much just a regular person, but I was born white, into a two-parent household which now, whether I like it or not, makes me privileged, a racist and responsible for slavery.
I am a fiscal and moral conservative, which by today’s standards, makes me a fascist because I plan, budget and support myself.
I went to school for 19 years and have always held a job. But I now find out that I am not here because I earned it, but because I was “advantaged”.
I am heterosexual, which according to gay folks, now makes me a homophobic.
I am not a Muslim, which now labels me as an infidel.
I am older than 55, making me a useless dinosaur who doesn’t understand Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Snapchat.
I think, and I reason, and I doubt most of what the ‘mainstream’ media tells me, which makes me a Right-Wing conspiracy nut.
I am proud of my heritage and our inclusive culture, making me a xenophobe.
I believe in hard work, fair play and fair reward according to each individual’s merits, which today makes me an anti-socialist.
I believe our system guarantees freedom of effort not freedom of outcome or subsidies which must make me a borderline sociopath.
I believe in the defense and protection of my nation for and by all citizens, now making me a militant.
I am proud of our flag, what it stands for and the many who died to let it fly, so I STAND during our National Anthem – so I must be a radical.
Funny – it all took place over the last decade!
GOD BLESS ALL OF US NORMAL PEOPLE!!!”
In June last year Bowen explained people who think nuclear is better than renewable are “dangerously ignorant”.
…..says the man who is ridiculously ignorant on the subject of energy density and the importance of energy density (and reliability) when powering a developed nation’s economy. Sad to see that being mouthed by a govt official of a country which is among those with the highest reserves of uranium and thorium in the world.
Totally unqualified for his job.
Uranium reserves by nation (2019)….
List of countries by uranium reserves – Wikipedia
Thorium….
https://tinyurl.com/3a2ty99w
Australia always has big reserves of weird metals….in Canada, we mostly haven’t bothered looking…..
Looks like Canada is third in the world in uranium reserves, but lower down on the list with thorium.
Impressive. Australia has 25% of the entire planets known reserves of Uranium. … and they’re fooling around with this nonsense.
Australia totally blows away every other country with its uranium reserves. No other country even comes close.
`Blackout Bowen’ will be his epitaph!
There has to be a line separating the customary innocent expectation that some government policies go wrong, from a criminal charge response when people die or are harmed because of unsafe policies that they were adequately warned about.
This is accountability at work.
Our imperfect society is currently in a cancel culture mode, with silence being a popular way to address criticism. Cancel the problem in the mind of the policy maker and all will be well, it seems. (Wrongly).
Governments, at least in peace time, have no authority to push policies that hard or kill people. People affected by deadly policies must have compensation and there must be rules that stop a policy being enforced when it starts killing us.
Covid is a prime example. Thousands of non-covid excess deaths have hit Australia, yet the (possibly) deadly causative policies roll on, deaths being cancelled in the political mind.
Electrical blackouts will cause more deaths. Solutions are widely known, but “carbon” based solutions are cancelled in the political mind.
……
Clamour for accountability of offending, death-causing policy people. Do not just sit there, reading about how it’s crook in Tallarook.
Geoff S
It was interesting to hear Bowen speak in the interview. The words just kept flowing. No insight demonstrated. No knowledge displayed. In fact whatever the opposite of insight and knowledge is called then Bowen was it.
Perhaps that is a clue to why the big lumps always float to the top of the septic tank of politics.
Climate and Energy Minister:
These guys are idiots.
Actually, 3. is: When blackouts occur, it is solely due to coal plant failures.
Hot Summers???
Not according to UAH Australia…
Summer of 2020/21 was -0.220C anomaly, putting it in 29th place out of 45 years
Summer of 2021/22 was -0.157C anomaly, putting it in 25th place out of 45 years
Summer of 2022/23 was -0.333C anomaly, putting it in 34th place out of 45 years
Yes, this summer may.. or may not.. be a warm one.
Guess what.. Australia occasionally has very warm summers.. !!
“we saw a big impact when the Callide Power Station in Queensland went offline :”
So the DUMB **** wants to shut down Eraring.. D’OH !!!!
I think Bowen’s team are confused private companies are not stepping up and building all the energy storage they would like to see.
I mean, the politicians set a target, and shut down a coal plant, and Bowen has repeatedly reassured people he is utterly determined to see it through. So why aren’t private companies rushing to respond to the signals provided by politicians like himself?
Bowen made a funny comment last year after talking to industry insiders – “Its not reasonable for people to expect the government to pay for everything”.
One more political crackpot who needs to lose his job. Fire up every fossil fuel plant you have, build new fossil fuel and nuclear plants, remove all wind and solar from the grid.
From watching him speak I have to assume he thinks that forcefully stating nonsense makes it not nonsense.
Have you noticed that the usual advocates for this nonsense eschew supporting it? I don’t see one supporting statement from them–at this moment in time.
Teir only task is to nit-pick irrelevancies as a petty distraction.
Their….
A political system that consistently puts dumbfeks into power is fundamentally broken. Perhaps the alarmists are right, but not for the reason they mean, and ‘democracy’ cannot cope with the climate change delusion.
Unfortunately exactly the same idiots rise to the top in dictatorships. At least with democracies and republics there is a fairly painless way to get rid of them when they become tiresome.
As regards the fundamental question “What do you need to make ‘renewables’ work?”:
To paraphrase the hero Neo in the film The Matrix: “Batteries. Lots of batteries.”
Green, renewable energy sources that alone can replace fossil fuel energy . . . all part of today’s existing Matrix if you haven’t yet taken the red pill.
If Australians keep electing morons, they will have earned and deserve the result they get. At some point, their own idiocy comes back to smack stupid voters in the face. Australians, the dolt Chris Bowen is YOUR doing. You elected him. You let him set the rules in the sandbox. So you are to blame if he smashed all the toys.
The thing with Bowen is he thinks everyone is as stupid as he is. Classic Dunning – Kruger effect.
It wasnt only Federal policy the states were fully promoting net zero craziness including Labour in Victoria, Queensland and SA and faux conservative Matt Kean in NSW liberal govnt and the failed just-out-of-school lib opposition leader in WA.